Debut author Kristi
Wientge tackles the uncomfortable—but all too relatable—subject of
female body hair and self-esteem with this sweet and charming novel in
the tradition of Judy Blume.

Karma Khullar is about to start
middle school, and she is super nervous. Not just because it seems like
her best friend has found a newer, blonder best friend. Or the fact that
her home life is shaken up by the death of her dadima. Or even that her
dad is the new stay-at-home parent, leading her mother to spend most of
her time at work. But because she’s realized that she has seventeen hairs that have formed a mustache on her upper lip.

With
everyone around her focused on other things, Karma is left to figure
out what to make of her terrifyingly hairy surprise all on her own.

The night of the
sixth-grade dance is supposed to be perfect for Maddie; she'll wear her
beautiful new dress, she'll hit the dance floor with her friends, and
her crush, Avery, will ask her to dance. Most importantly, she'll
finally leave her tiny elementary school behind for junior high. But as
the first slow song starts to play, her plans crumble. Avery asks
someone else to dance instead--and then the power goes out. Huddled in
the gym, Maddie and her friends are stunned to hear that a tornado has
ripped through the other side of town, destroying both Maddie's and
Avery's homes.

Kind neighbors open up their home to Maddie's and
Avery's families, which both excites and horrifies Maddie. Sharing the
same house . . . with Avery? For the entire summer? While it buys her
some time to prove that Avery made the wrong choice at the dance, it
also means he'll be there to witness her morning breath and her annoying
little brother. Meanwhile, she must search for her beloved dog, who
went missing during the tornado. At the dance, all she wanted was to be
more grown-up. Now that she has no choice, is she ready for it?

Twelve-year-old Ruby
Clyde Henderson’s life turns upside down the day her mother’s boyfriend
holds up a convenience store, and her mother is wrongly imprisoned for
assisting with the crime. Ruby and her pet pig, Bunny, find their way to
her estranged Aunt Eleanor's home. Aunt Eleanor is a nun who lives on a
peach orchard called Paradise, and had turned away from their family
long ago. With a little patience, she and Ruby begin to get along―but
Eleanor has secrets of her own, secrets that might mean more hard times
for Ruby.

Ruby believes that she's the only one who can find a
way to help heal her loved ones, save her mother, and bring her family
back together again. But being in a family means that everyone has to
work together to support each other, and being home doesn't always mean
going back to where you came from. This is a big-hearted novel about
trust, belonging, and the struggles and joys of loving one another.

Aspiring inventor and
magician’s apprentice Felix Carmer III would rather be tinkering with
his latest experiments than sawing girls in half on stage, but with
Antoine the Amazifier’s show a tomato’s throw away from going under,
Carmer is determined to win the cash prize in the biggest magic
competition in Skemantis. When fate throws Carmer across the path of
fiery, flightless, one-winged faerie princess Grit (do not call
her Grettifrida), they strike a deal. If Carmer will help Grit
investigate a string of faerie disappearances, she’ll use her very real
magic to give his mechanical illusions a much-needed boost against the
competition. But Carmer and Grit soon discover they’re not the only duo
trying to pair magic with machine – and the combination can be deadly.

After twelve-year-old
orphan, Alli Rosco, is cursed with a deadly spell, she must join the
legendary Thieves Guild in order to try and save herself in this
high-stakes debut.

Twelve-year-old Alli Rosco is smart,
resourceful, and totally incapable of keeping her mouth shut. Some of
these traits have served her well during her nine years in Azeland’s
orphanage, and others have proved more troublesome…but now that she’s
escaped to try her luck on the streets, she has bigger problems than
extra chores to contend with. Surviving would be hard enough, but after a
run-in with one of the city’s Protectors, she’s marked by a curse
that’s slowly working its way to her heart. There is a cure, but the
cost is astronomical—and seems well out of her reach.

Enter Beck,
a boy with a gift for theft and a touch of magic, who seems almost too
good to be true. He tells Alli that the legendary Thieves Guild, long
thought to be a myth, is real. Even better, Beck is a member and thinks
she could be, too. All she has to do is pass the trial that the King of
Thieves will assign to her. Join the Guild, collect her yearly reward
and buy a cure. Plus, Alli hopes the Guild will be the home—the family—that
Alli has always wanted. But when their trial goes wrong, innocent lives
are put in danger, and Alli has to decide how much she can sacrifice in
order to survive.

Sara Johnston-Fischer
loves her family, of course. But that doesn't mean she's thrilled when
her summer plans are upended for a surprise cross-country train trip
with her two moms, Mimi and Carol; her younger sister, Ladybug; her
older sister, Laurel; and Laurel's poncho-wearing activist boyfriend,
Root. And to make matters worse, one of her moms is writing a tell-all
book about the trip . . . and that means allllll, every ridiculous and
embarrassing moment of Sara's life.

Sara finds herself
crisscrossing the country with a gaggle of wild Texans. As they travel
from New Orleans to Chicago to the Grand Canyon and beyond, Sara finds
herself changing along with the landscape outside the train windows. And
she realizes that she just might go home reinvented.

Guardians of the Galaxy meets Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in this laugh-out-loud funny debut novel about a girl’s journey into space and beyond to find her place in the universe.

Holly
Farb is not the Princess of the Galaxy. She may be top of the class in
every subject, but she can’t even win a school election, never mind rule
the Milky Way. The aliens who kidnapped her have gotten it all wrong.

Unfortunately
Holly’s alien pirate kidnappers believe that she’s the princess they’ve
been looking for, and so she finds herself hurtling through space on an
alien pirate ship together with her teacher, Mr. Mendez, and Chester,
the most annoying boy in her class. Now all she has to do is escape the
pirates, find the missing princess, and get back to Earth in time for
her big test on Friday.

But it turns out that space is a pretty
big place, and before they can go home, Holly, Chester, and Mr. Mendez
must face down space cruise liners, bounty hunters, giant worms, perky
holograms, cosmic board games, sinister insectoid librarians, and a
robot who is learning how to lie.

Between running from space
pirates, defying the President of the Universe, and meeting a host of
rather unusual new friends, Holly starts to wonder if there might be
more to life than being top of the class after all.

For years people have claimed to see a mysterious white deer in the woods around Chinaberry Creek. It always gets away.

One
evening, Eric Harper thinks he spots it. But a deer doesn’t have a coat
that shimmers like a pearl. And a deer certainly isn’t born with an
ivory horn curling from its forehead. When Eric discovers the
unicorn is hurt and being taken care of by the vet next door and her
daughter, Allegra, his life is transformed. A tender tale of
love, loss, and the connections we make, The Unicorn in the Barn shows us that sometimes ordinary life takes extraordinary turns.

A boy who drifted into
the seaside town of Isla as a baby searches for answers about where he
and his parrot came from in this charmer of a tale laced with magical
realism from New York Times bestselling author Alison McGhee.

The
seaside town of Isla has many stories, the most notable being the
legend of the Seafaring Parrot. Locals claim that the Seafarer remembers
every sound, every whisper, cry, laugh, or snort ever uttered. But,
though there have been rumored Seafarer sightings, no one has actually seen the
bird before. Other stories surround a boy named Pablo, who had washed
up on shore in a blow-up swimming pool as an infant with only a lavender
parrot as a companion. Now, on the eve of his tenth birthday, the
stories are repeated.

“At first I thought it was a huge fish,”
Emmanuel, the man who found and took Pablo in, says. Pierre, the baker’s
guess was a good one: Perhaps Pablo has come from an undiscovered
country, one unknown to the rest of the world. Maybe the inhabitants
there lived in tree houses, or underground. Or maybe he’s a pirate baby.
But Pablo wants the truth, and the only one who might know it is Birdy,
his parrot. After all, she was there, holding onto the raft. But unlike
most birds who live in Isla, Birdy can neither talk or fly. Or, at
least, she never has. Until…one day, when strong winds begin to
blow—winds similar to the ones that brought Pablo to shore—Birdy begins
to mutter. Could Birdy be a Seafaring parrot? If she is, then she will
be able to tell Pablo the true story of where he came from—of who tied
him so lovingly and safely to that raft? But, if she is, that also means
the second part of the Seafarer myth is true…that Seafaring Parrots
will, eventually, fly away.

As Pablo is buzzing with questions, hopes, and fears, an old saying echoes in his mind: winds of change mean fortune lost or fortune gained. And
while the winds rise in Isla, Pablo holds tight to Birdy. Would losing
his companion, his dearest link to his past, be that loss?

Eleven-year-old Fern's rundown home borders a pristine
forest, where her impoverished family hunts and forages for food. It's also her
refuge from the crushing responsibility of caring for her wild younger brothers
and PTSD-stricken stepfather. But when a fracking company rolls into town, Fern
realizes that her special grove could be ripped away, and no one else seems to
care.

Her stepfather thinks a job with the frackers could help pull the family out of
poverty. Her wealthy grandfather--who wants to take custody of Fern and her
brothers--likes the business it brings to his manufacturing company. Facing
adversity from all sides, can one young girl make a difference in the fate of
her family and their way of life?

A beautifully heartfelt middle grade novel about
twelve-year-old Emily Murphy, who is learning to navigate the new challenges of
middle school and shifting friendships, while at home her older sister is
recovering from an eating disorder that has affected the whole family.

Emily Murphy is about to enter middle school. She’s sort
of excited… though not nearly as much as her best friend Hazel, who is ready
for everything to be new. Emily wishes she and Hazel could just continue on as
they always have, being the biggest fans ever of the Unicorn Chronicles, making
up dance moves, and getting their regular order at The Slice.
But things are changing. At home, Emily and her mom are learning to move on
after her parents’ divorce. Hardest of all, her beloved sister Mina has been in
a treatment facility to deal with her anorexia. Emily is eager to have her
back, but anxious about her sister getting sick again.

Hazel is changing too. She has new friends from the field
hockey team, is starting to wear makeup, and have crushes on boys. Emily is
trying to keep up, but she keeps doing and saying the wrong thing. She want to
be the perfect new Emily. But who is that really?Things That Surprise You is a beautifully layered novel about navigating
the often shifting bonds of family and friendship, and learning how to put the
pieces back together when things fall apart.

Newbery Honor winner
Janet Taylor Lisle’s gorgeous and profound new novel about a pivotal
summer in two girls’ lives explores the convictions we form, the
judgments we make, and the values we hold.

The pond is called Quicksand Pond.

It’s
a shadowy, hidden place, full of chirping, shrieking, croaking life.
It’s where, legend has it, people disappear. It’s where scrappy Terri
Carr lives with her no-good family. And it’s where twelve-year-old
Jessie Kettel is reluctantly spending her summer vacation.

Jessie
meets Terri right away, on a raft out in the water, and the two become
fast friends. On Quicksand Pond, Jessie and Terri can be lost to the
outside world—lost until they want to be found. But a tragedy that
occurred many decades ago has had lingering effects on this sleepy,
small-minded town, and especially on Terri Carr. And the more Jessie
learns, the more she begins to question her new friendship—and herself.

This
is the story of Olive - who loves to sing, but finds herself gripped by
stage fright, especially with her ghastly, overbearing mother breathing
down her neck with expectations. When she flunks a big audition for the
school show, Olive wanders among the glittering, enticing theaters and
comes upon Maudeville, a fascinating old theater with so many secrets,
run by the grand-dame of show business, Maude Devore. Offered the
opportunity of a lifetime, Olive is gradually sucked into a story of
darkness and fear, where the bright lights of Maudeville conceal a
shifting world of ghosts . . .

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Do you have a favorite recent new cover? Or a favorite from this list? Let me know in the comments!